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A FRIEND, aware that people recovering from back surgery
have to spend a lot of time on treadmills, gaveme
the first year of The Sopranos to help pass the time, and
of course as I watched it, I thought about the Clintons and the
wonderful “family” they assembled. Tony Soprano is a pretty good
metaphor for our ex-president: clever, alternately charming and
brutal, capable of genuine affection and even love, but equally
capable of unrestrained venom. Like Tony, Bill likes to have his
way with women, from the most vulgar to the most elegant. And like
Tony, it’s all about money. The Clinton era will eventually be recognized
as a time when the presidency was run like a criminal enterprise,
and the national interest was overwhelmed by the family “business.”

I quite understand the reluctance of the chatterers to embrace this
thesis, first because it makes them look stupid (what didn’t they
know, and why did it take them so long to know they didn’t know
it?), and also because it’s a terrible bone in our national throat.
What’s the difference between us under the Clintons and Panama under
Noriega?

Does anyone out there doubt that the entire pardon shindig was anything
other than a new mafia business?

Maybe
a few souls — like the sainted Susan McDougal — were pardoned
“on the merits” (that is, for favors done on behalf of the family).
The rest were most likely linked, one way or another, to payoffs.
I can just imagine Clinton’s delight when he realized that a pardon
was worth at least a night in the Lincoln Bedroom; maybe even more.
The Newsweek account of Clinton’s last days in power is more
easily understood, now that we realize that his terrible anxiety
about losing power had a real bottom line.

And I wonder if the pardon racket turned into a bidding war. Did
Mike Milken refuse to be shaken down? Or did his New York City enemies
offer more?

The plaintive cries of the left are the most entertaining part of
this cheap melodrama, for they are the ones who launched the massive
disinformation campaign of “it’s all about sex, it’s sexual McCarthyism,”
when it clearly wasn’t. It’s all about corruption. The liberals
are like the Soprano gangsters protesting about anti-Italian bigotry.
They’re shilling for Clinton mafiosi whining that Americans think
that all Clintonians are linked to the mafia.

I listened to the editor of Newsweek this morning murmer
“I don’t think we know the half of it,” a careful understatement.
Remember when Chris Cox asked Charles LaBella how much Congress
knew (and this after considerable investigation) about the campaign-finance
shakedowns? LaBella said, “about ten percent.” Cox couldn’t believe
it, and asked again, “you mean there is NINETY percent we don’t
know?” “Right.”

There’s enough there for dozens of doctoral dissertations on corruption.
And the current unpleasantness is worth a study too: What happens
when the Don is removed from power? I have no doubt that a part
of the press, and most of the Democratic party, was either in enthusiastic
cahoots with the White House mafia or under effective control: blackmailed,
intimidated, corrupted. Once that awful power was taken away, Bill
is just another well-connected guy, and while some of the other
families may owe him favors, their business no longer depends on
him. In fact, there may come a moment when he’s decidedly bad for
business, and they won’t hesitate to throw him over to the feds.

With Bill’s enforced retirement, his consiglieri are scrambling
for work. All of a sudden, Carville’s clients are losing elections,
and Blumenthal is begging for money so that he can continue to harass
the phantasmagorical Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

Just like Marx said: It’s tragic the first time around, then it’s
farce. And Tony Soprano is much more
fun.